This week in reading and viewing my learning resources for my graduate school coursework, I was asked to review a website called Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Located at http://www.p21.org, this site had many various tools and resources a teacher could use to educate himself/herself in how to prepare students for the ever changing world we live in. I personally loved the fact that this site was completely dedicated to the broad spectrum of learning goals. The site administrators state how important the core subjects are and then branch out to include the “four c’s” of 21st century skills: creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking. They also include life skills and technology skills as major skills students should take away from their educational experience. My understanding of the partnership’s philosophy is that one should being teaching the core subjects and implement the highlighted 21st century skills within each content area.
This website not only highlighted the core ideas behind the partnership’s philosophy, but presented very real ways for teachers to begin to implement the teaching of these skills. One tool I came across and found incredibly helpful to my understanding was the Route 21 tool. When one enters the Route 21 page, images are presented showing the core content areas as well as the 21st century skills. When a skill area is clicked on, a new page appears showing strategies and ideas that could be implemented to immerse students in that particular skill. This was incredibly helpful if a teacher wanted to really work on these skills but had come to a road block when trying to think of new ways to do so.
Another area of the partnership’s website was dedicated to different states. As I teach in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was excited to see that Nevada had its own section detailing how the state is addressing skills of the 21st century. I was able to see how my state plans to revisit standards and make them more including of 21st century skills. Though it was nice to see what Nevada has to look forward to, there was a section detailing how Nevada has already begun this process of revising standards. I disagreed with this piece of information, because as far as I am aware the standards have not yet had any changes. Perhaps I have not seen change because the state supposedly started with secondary education, but as a teacher at a K-12 school, one would think that I would have some idea of these important steps beginning to happen in that small community. Even if standards have begun to change already and I have not noticed, I am currently very aware of what is to come and it is exciting to address this change and get started with it in my classroom.
In learning about valuable skills for the 21st century this week, I am aware that even in the younger grades teachers must get started implementing these ideas immediately. In watching a video this week called “21st Century Skills” featuring Dr. David Thornburg, I have gained insight on how to go about this. I believe that project based learning is one of the best ways to touch on many of the 21st century skills. Project based learning addresses creativity and critical thinking, and in some cases collaboration. In creating projects and teaching each other, students are finding solutions to projects by themselves. Instead of being handed an answer and expected to memorize it for a test, with project based learning students are digging deeper into the presented problem or situation and getting a hands on experience in the process. Ultimately this kind of learning will be more beneficial because students will not soon forget it. As the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website implies, teachers need to be preparing students with these skills so they can grow up to be functional, productive adults entering the work world.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Program number 11: Skills for the 21st century [DVD]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A framework for 21st century learning. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/
Good post. A couple of things stood out to me on your analysis. The first thing would be your comments on the supposedly changing standards and the impacts they can make, and your unawareness of them. Unfortunately I thinnk this happens much too often. Standards and essential skills and teaching strategies and skills are changed so often, and much of the time there is little consultation with the actual teachers, yet you are expected to implement these, or it can be your job. We just had a change in our superintendent, so everyone is kind of on their heals as to what the changes will be. It gets incredibly frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI also like your comments regarding the kids having to find the answers on their own through research. I have definitely noticed the kids seem to take more ownership and therefore remember the knowledge if they find it themselves.
You said in your post that "I am aware that even in the younger grades teachers must get started implementing these ideas immediately." I feel this is important, but it won't be as hard as it seems. Four years ago I was doing a long term subbing assignment in a kindergarten classroom. I was surprised to see a 5 year old who was able to sit at a computer, install software, and start playing an educational game without any help at all. This was something I haven't seen from a student before. I was lucky to have had an opportunity as a kid to have access to computers from an early age. I was like that child in my classroom but I was an extremely rare sight.
ReplyDeleteThe children know more than most of the teachers at my school about how to use the technology, we just have to make sure that they are using the technology in productive ways.
Excellent post! I could not agree more about the importance of learning the four “C’s” of 21st century skills at the elementary level. As a coach, I am currently experiencing something similar and I feel this could be applied to the classroom also. This year, our staff began to notice that many of our freshman wrestlers had not developed some of the fundamental skills that are necessary to be a successful high school wrestler. Likewise, we are not able to teach them advanced moves that would enable them to compete at a higher level. Thus, we have begun collaborating and identifying what we believe the fundamental skills our youth and middle school programs need to develop. I think this example can parallel a classroom in this way: If our students develop these skills at an early age, they will be able to apply them to complex real world situations by the time they are in high school (i.e. working in a group to propose a solution to the crisis in Egypt).
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